What Is Bao-Ngoc Thach Waiting For in a Game With No Goal?
Four hours into Lamp Season, in a District 4 flat at 34 degrees, Beatrix Callender asks the question the chat has stopped asking.
Hour three. Bao-Ngoc Thach's character has stood beside a lamp for eleven minutes. The fan on her floor pushes the heat from one wall to the other. It is 2 p.m. and 34 degrees.
I ask what she is waiting for.
"Nothing."
I ask again.
"The lamp to do something. It won't."
Nine thousand people follow her. About 400 are in the chat right now, typing "same" and "is it raining yet". It does not rain. In 600 hours it has rained twice, she says, and both times she was in the shower.
So why stay for the third hour? She thinks about it for a full minute, which on this stream counts as fast.
"You keep checking your phone," she says. "I'm the one who's relaxed."
I was checking my phone.